


Compare and Contrast

by deepandlovelydark



Series: Second Chances [23]
Category: MacGyver (TV 1985)
Genre: Spies & Secret Agents
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-21
Updated: 2018-02-07
Packaged: 2019-03-07 11:06:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 8,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13433406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deepandlovelydark/pseuds/deepandlovelydark
Summary: A true friend will be there for you, when nobody else is.An abuser will do the same thing, once they've made sure nobody else can.In which an innocent spy and a less-than-innocent assassin learn the ways of the Great Game, in distinctly different fashions.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Abandoned. Now in rewrites as a rather less tangled GBU story instead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> On hold, until I work up the energy to go ahead and actually finish this story. 
> 
> This is all back-fill material for Second Chances anyway, so it's not at the top of my priority list.

_Author’s note: I took some inspiration for this from “What Becky Saw”, by my co-author Tanista._

A sandcastle: but not just any sandcastle. A solid three feet by three feet square, with a corresponding moat, and turrets that she's built up to reach her shoulder height (well, when she's sitting). Walls protected with jagged seashells. Four bits of white satin tied to sticks serve as corner flags. 

It is the most extravagant thing in sight (Jacques had raised an eyebrow when she’d asked him to recommend a totally isolated stretch of beach, but to do him credit, had found her one). And she's finished it all herself.

"I did it, Chris," Becky whispers. "I really did it."

She wonders, sometimes, what life would have been like if her brother hadn't died in that crash. If he'd made the move east with her. Easier, with both of them to face down Mission City? Harder, if Uncle Mac had been forced to give them up?

What's happened has happened, though, and she tries not to think about the past too much. But they'd been looking forward to their summer off so much...agreeing that next time they had time and sun and the perfect beach day, they'd build a sand fort big enough for them both to sit in. 

And then the accident. 

So after years of inland Minnesota, it's nice to be able to put this to bed at last. Faster then she'd expected, actually, it helps having an uncle who understands structural engineering. Even if he isn't here just now...off with Jacques again, for a wine tasting. Weird. Mac doesn't drink much, and when he does it's usually hard liquor - but then, they are in California. 

"I wonder what you'd do now, Chris," Becky murmurs. "Go buy an ice cream? Swim? Watch girls?"

As though the words have inspired the reality, a girl pops into sight from behind a sand dune, her bikini strings fluttering behind her as she runs. Coming along the beach with a frantic intensity that doesn't seem quite natural, in this lazy warm sunshine (to think that it's winter back home!) Splashing through the shallows. Becky finds herself puzzled. Anybody in that much of a hurry ought to be running on the sand proper, which is hard-packed and would offer easier footing. 

Like she wants to get away, but doesn't want to be tracked.

On impulse, Becky pulls out one of her flags, and waves it in the air.

**************

“Don’t follow me,” her brother always says to Ashton Cooke, when he leaves. 

He has to order her every time, because she wants to know what he’s been up to. Murdoc was fourteen, she only nine, when he rescued the two of them from an obscurely deprived farm in the Sussex downs. (When her childhood started- because what had happened before certainly hadn’t counted.) Since then he’s made sure she’s enjoyed every conceivable comfort, had her every wish granted, except one- just what it is he’s doing to pay all the bills. 

Well. She’s a week shy of her twenty-third birthday, will be graduating from Cambridge in a matter of months, and more than mature enough to learn what’s going on. It isn’t something law-abiding; otherwise he wouldn’t have kept her on the move like that, with a new flat and a new name every three months. Something profitable, obviously. And she doubts it’s sexual. Her brother’s incapacity for romance strikes her as indifference, not abhorrence. 

So she’d set herself to finding out. 

Now- with a stitch in her side, three assassins with guns after her, and a desperate need to find her brother- Ashton is rather wishing she hadn’t bothered. She pounds along the beach, keenly desperate for a hiding place, or a street outfit to replace the one she’d had to abandon, when they’d started shooting her rowboat into fragments- 

small miracle! A friendly face, a flag beckoning her into a sandcastle of simply preposterous size. It’s the work of a moment to leap the parapet. Another, to gratefully hide herself under the pile of flowery towels. 

Her benefactress glances down at her. Blue eyes, hair that shines a burnished copper in the Californian sun. Not just friendly, but familiar, somehow. 

“Who’s after you?”

“Three men- they say they’re police officers, but they aren’t.” _At least, I hope not!_ “I don’t- I don’t know how to make anyone believe they’re not.”

“How d’you know, then?”

“I saw them murder someone. In cold blood, I think it was a mob hit.” She risks peeking over the castle wall. They’re distant, but moving in, slow but sure. 

Those warm blue eyes study hers. Sympathetic, but assessing. 

“Okay.”

“You believe me?” 

Her benefactress shrugs. 

“Maybe I’m wrong. But if I’m choosing between saving an innocent, or punishing the guilty...”

**************

“Hello,” Penny calls, cheerfully. “I brought you an ice cream! I had to guess what you’d like, so I told them double chocolate, with chocolate sauce and chocolate sprinkles and chocolate chunks…”

“That was a pretty good guess,” Becky says, putting down her book with a smile. “Thanks.”

“What happened to that sand castle you were going to build?” Penny asks, settling down with her own demure iced lemonade. “You said that’s why you didn’t want to go shopping with me- oh, I bet you’ve just been reading this whole time, haven’t you?”

“Some reading,” Becky says, in a rather slow voice like her uncle’s drawl, “has definitely been happening. Yeah.”

“Silly Becky. You could read back in Minnesota.”

“Also true,” Becky agrees, with lazy good humour. She pulls the deck chair into an upright position, and starts licking at her cone. “So, find any nice bargains?”

“Oh, lots! I found the loveliest pink feather boa- brand new, not all ragged and moth-eaten. And some swishy velvet cloaks, lots of things the theatre’s been needing. You should have come too. Hello, officers,” she adds. “Lovely day, isn’t it?”

“Not exactly,” the foremost one says. “This is very important. We’re tracking a dangerous criminal, a murderer who’s just fled the scene of the crime. A woman-” his eye rests on Becky, appreciatively. “Maybe a head taller than you, long blonde hair, striped zebra bikini. Have you seen anyone like that along here?” 

Becky considers. “No. And I’ve been on this beach all morning, so I ought to have noticed.”

“Like I said,” one of the others puts in. “We should have gone back the other way, that’s where the girl was heading.”

“Isn’t that awful,” Penny says, shivering dramatically. “A murderess, and not just on stage! Becky, let’s go back to the hotel, quick.”

“I’m pretty comfortable here,” Becky says. “Maybe I’ll get some more reading done, who knows?”

“Oh- Becky Grahme, you are hopeless.”

“Thanks.” She nods at the uniformed men, as they depart. “You know what I really would like, though?”

“You just name it, and I’ll get it!”

“Just some alone time. I mean, I spent a week cooped up in a hotel room with three other girls- this is the first time I’ve had a minute to myself all week. Why don’t we meet up at the hotel for lunch around one? And then I promise you can take me shopping or whatever for the rest of the afternoon.”

Penny blinks. “Lunch, on top of all that ice cream?”

“Sure. Like Jack says, you want to balance out your four major food groups. Ice cream, pizza, potato chips-”

“Oh, him,” Penny interrupts. “Becky, I don’t think you want to hang around people like that.”

“People like what?” 

“Criminals! I can’t think why your uncle lets him run the shop on Wednesdays. Isn’t he afraid that Jack might steal something, or run off with the cash register or something?”

Becky starts chewing into her waffle cone. “Jack wouldn’t do that. Penny, you can’t always trust to labels. Or take what people say at face value.”

“I know you can’t take what Jack says at face value. Do you know, he made friends with one of my aunt's business associates, and- and I don’t quite know what happened, but he gave Jack a lot of money for an investment, and something went wrong, and he never saw it again. But in three weeks, Jack was in prison. I just don’t think he’s wholesome.”

“Okay, so maybe you don’t want to go trusting him with bundles of unmarked bills or anything,” Becky says, wiping ice cream off her mouth. “Maybe think about it this way. Your aunt was a criminal, too. And very proud of it, she must have said so to just about everybody she met.”

“Well, I never! That isn’t the same thing at all!”

“No,” Becky says, very quietly. “Because your aunt would never have agreed to give up a whole day out of her week, so that my overworked uncle could have a rest. Penny, we trust him because he’s been there for us. We tide him over when the taxi business is slack, because we know he’ll repay the favour when we need one. When you’re living as close to the edge as we do, it makes all the difference in the world to know there’s someone you can count on- and for us, that’s Jack Dalton. So yeah. I am missing him, and maybe there was nothing to be done about those plane tickets- but we’re out here, having a good time, and he’s probably going to spend Christmas with nothing but a whiskey bottle for company. And I feel like we’re letting him down.”

Penny looks distinctly unconvinced. “I still think there’s much nicer people in Mission City. Like Jacques. Now, Jacques...”

**************

“Oh my god,” Ashton says, when Becky unearths her (she’s been breathing through a strategically placed straw, quiet as a mouse). “I thought that she’d never leave.”

“Penny can be like that,” Becky agrees. “Or worse- be glad she didn’t start on any theatre anecdotes, or you’d have been stuck under there all day. So now what? Do you want to go to the police, tell them about the impersonators?”

“I can’t,” Ashton says, brushing sand off herself. “See, my brother’s all wrapped up in it too. I have to get in touch with him before we do anything else- he has a permanent suite at the Hotel Bel-Air, I think that’s where I need to start.”

“That’s a coincidence, I’m staying there too. So we might as well go together.”

"...you're not going to let me out of your sight, are you?"

"Nope."

“But I thought you wanted to sit and read? I mean- this might be dangerous.”

“Sit and read, when there’s an adventurous mystery going on?” Becky asks. “Not on your life!”

“I’m really hoping,” Ashton mutters, “that it isn’t going to come to that…”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alternating chapters, in case the summary didn't make clear. 
> 
> This is taking place shortly after the "Mayday" chapter in Second Chances.

One minute, MacGyver’s just casually browsing in a shop in Nanjing. Letting the chain of an opal necklace run through his fingers, wondering if he dare ask Murdoc to buy the lovely thing and mail it home. Becky’s never had any nice jewelry except for her mother’s pieces, and he has a notion she’d like this one. Black as night, yet somehow rainbow-spangled... 

The next, he consciously notices the thing that’s already made him tense with uncertainty: Murdoc’s not here. Nowhere in this tiny shop, not visible on the street outside- and the man hasn’t let him off the leash once, in the three days since they’ve left Mission City. 

Not that he really wants to be left alone. Especially not after Murdoc had described the select handful of enemies who’ll be after both of them now, and just what they’ll do to a novice like him if he’s caught out unawares. 

_He’ll come back,_ MacGyver tells himself, almost automatically. 

And immediately rebukes himself for the thought, because he’s not in Minnesota anymore, and doesn’t- can’t- trust anything now. Maybe this is Murdoc’s idea of an initiative test, leaving him alone to see how he’ll handle himself. Maybe it’s revenge for not agreeing to sleep with the man; maybe he’s been abandoned here out of sheer spite. 

A siren wails outside - those sound the same, anywhere- and he freezes in terror. Heart thumping with guilt, even though he hasn’t committed a crime. Yet. 

Maybe somebody’s arrested Murdoc, and he’s on his own. Stranded in a foreign country, with no money and no help coming. He puts the necklace back, with an internal sigh. 

_Becky. I’m sorry._

_**************_

It’s a week- an entire week, seven days and eight hours and forty seven minutes, over the course of which Murdoc feels like he’s aged a year- before he finds MacGyver again in a rundown garage. Scraping off his stubble with the aid of a broken wing mirror, and what must be a ridiculously sharp SAK.

“Wouldya get out of the way? You’re blocking my light.” 

He moves. “You seem remarkably indifferent to my presence.”

“You ditched me,” MacGyver says, with no apparent concern. “I gave you a full hour in that shop- I timed that- and then I decided I’d better get on with my life while I still had one.”

“Why didn’t you go back to the hotel? Don’t tell me you forgot the way, not with your sense of direction.”

“Didn’t trust the place. Figured anyone who could take you out, which might have happened, would be smart enough to go looking there. So I improvised. Blagged my way into a job-”

“Without being able to speak the language?”

“Do you have any idea how boring winter nights get in Minnesota? I’m sure I mentioned teaching myself some characters. Course it takes a while, writing everything down- but I’ve been picking up Cantonese pretty fast.”

“I-” Murdoc begins, and pauses. MacGyver had mentioned that, and he’d completely discounted the comment, on the assumption that the barista was enthusiastically overstating his capabilities. That’d been an underestimation. 

“Besides, cars are pretty much cars. And the guy needed a new mechanic who wouldn’t spend all day drunk- it’s been going pretty well. His wife makes this great noodle soup- ”

“Probably with duck blood in it,” Murdoc says, with a certain exasperation. Of course, it’s excellent that his would-be protege is this self-reliant- but does MacGyver have to be so unflappable about it?

“Oh yeah,” MacGyver says, casually. “I helped her gut the ducks yesterday. Like I said, it’s pretty tasty.”

“You sound as if you’d have no objection whatsoever if I left you to it.”

“You could do that,” MacGyver agrees. He wipes his face down, blows the knife clean. “Your move.”

The man won’t beg. Won’t even ask. 

“I was kidnapped,” Murdoc says, allowing his genuine embarrassment to come to the fore; he has a feeling nothing less is going to resolve the standoff. “A foreigner flaunting his money a little too ostentatiously- the time-consuming part was establishing that there really wasn’t anything more to it than that. Not the most talkative gang I’ve ever encountered. That always makes it difficult.”

“So what happened? You murder them or something?”

He tuts. “MacGyver, I am an assassin, not a street brawler. Art for art’s sake. Or occasionally, cold hard cash- but certainly not for anything this petty. It would have been beneath me.”

“Huh. Well, I guess you can afford to be-”

“As will you, if you intend to follow my line of trade,” Murdoc says shortly. “Death attracts attention. It fascinates people, tickles their psyches in a way like no other crime. You don’t talk about arson mysteries, or rape mysteries or embezzlement mysteries, you talk about murder mysteries. When I kill someone, I do so in the full knowledge that there will be an audience- a keen-eyed, edge-of-their-seats audience - and I play my performance with every gaudy contrivance I can muster. But I don’t kill people and expect nobody to notice, because they do and will. Every time, MacGyver. So get that through your skull before I feel obliged to beat it into you.”

“...right.”

There’s something abashed in MacGyver's voice. Also a good deal of relief. About the right proportions of both, Murdoc judges. 

(He is certainly not letting this maniac kill anybody until the man calms down a bit.)

**********

“Where did that come from?” he asks at the hotel, watching a rich opal necklace clatter into the room safe. 

“Oh,” MacGyver murmurs. “Just something I picked up.”


	3. Chapter 3

This is Bert. Bert is an assassin. 

Or to be technical about it, he's a henchman; but a henchman with the right kind of stuff to get promoted. He knows he'll make it. 

This job had been the first time he's been entrusted with a leadership position, and it'd seemed simple enough. The Tarnantino gang has been trying to throw its weight around a bit lately, show off to the opposition. And in a city as thoroughly owned by the Phoenix Foundation as LA is, it's almost harder to find a target who isn't an employee or affiliate or in some way gets his daily bread from the Big Bird. 

(Which is what the Foundation's called, on the street; because it pisses off their agents like nobody's business.)

Arthur Farrelli hadn't been anybody special, just a restaurant manager who'd made a good thing off catering for Phoenix agents in his back room sometimes; but he'd made the mistake of chatting with the feds a little too overtly, and that meant he was a walking target anyway. A nice safe proposition, from Bert's point of view; there'll be more suspects than the overworked police can be bothered looking up. And the point will be taken in the Phoenix boardroom, where it counts. 

So it annoys him when a kid comes along and screws everything up, by watching the whole thing. 

Oh well. 

She'll have to die now. 

**********

"So what's your brother got to do with it?" Becky asks, as they head for the street. (She's rigged up something out of a thin calico blanket and safety pins that can at least pass for a wrap. Pretty handy girl, Ashton thinks.)

"I think," Ashton says, weighing her words. "He's the next target. You know how you can be hearing a conversation without really listening, and then suddenly you're paying attention because somebody said your name? I was in this restaurant, and heard somebody say my brother's name." (Well, one of them, but Becky doesn't need to know that.) "I tried to go and warn the first guy on the list, but they were just shooting him when I got there- so I have to track down Jacques before I do anything else. So let's get a taxi."

"I can't really pay for that..." 

"I can," Ashton says breezily. "I'm annoying like that."

Bit of a change from Penny there, Becky thinks, as they hail a cab and get in. Not entirely unwelcome, either. 

"Is he, by any chance, even more English than you and interested in theatre?"

"Are you in on this? Because my brother always said to mistrust a coincidence..."

"I might know him. I think- he's sort of dating my uncle."

"I thought you looked familiar! You look a lot like MacGyver, don't you?"

"Uh, I guess? He wears his hair even longer than I do- how'd you know what my Uncle Mac looks like, anyway?"

"I saw a picture in my brother's wallet." (She stole it, actually; it's a game they play. The quicker she can do it the better, as long as he doesn't catch her; and he lets her keep the cash.) "He says that wallet photos are generally an insult to the subject, but this was one of his own shots. Medium distance, with autumn leaves and your uncle holding a Swiss Army Knife - he probably didn't even know it was being taken. Jacques is very good at that."

"That's creepy," Becky says, after a moment. (Luke had hopefully carried her picture for a good six months, and she hadn't liked that much at all.)

"Well, my brother is creepy- aren't they always? Or are you an only child?"

"These days...there was a car crash, and he died. That's why I'm living with my uncle in the first place."

"Oh my god. I'm so sorry."

"Don't worry about it. I've kinda had to come to terms with it."

She's starting to agree with Ashton; this is too much weird happenstance for one day, and too many coincidences. 

Hopefully, they can find Jacques before he ends up in an accident like Chris...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bert is borrowed from "How to Build a Death Trap", one of my rare fics that isn't set in an AU. 
> 
> Same guy though, pretty much.


	4. Chapter 4

Mac was not in love with Jack Dalton. 

(If he was, he wouldn’t be trekking across the globe with this assassin, would he?)

He’s not in love with anybody, despite hometown rumour and movie nights and his own sweet niece’s speculations about his part-time barista. She’d always said that he was good for crazy Jack, a sentiment that Jack would laughingly protest while evidently agreeing with. And she’d said, though not so much in public, how good Jack was for him. Keeping him cheerful and bright, encouraging him to keep going. All true enough, but that doesn’t have to be love. Can’t be. 

He didn’t need anybody in Mission City to tell him in so many words. That sure, sometimes guys have good solid friendships, and maybe they go and blow off steam when nobody’s looking- but only as a side thing, something to dabble in between their real lives. Not the stuff of serious relationships. Not love. 

Besides, he isn’t gay. He’d genuinely enjoyed himself with Ellen, those dreamy first few years before everything soured. After that, even: they’d never had any problems in the sack, despite everything else that had gone wrong. Look at him wanting to date Nikki Carpenter. Nothing had come of it, but...well, it could have. Maybe. If he’d worked up the nerve. 

He sure isn’t in love with Murdoc. Mission City gossip had for once been a piece of light relief, when he’d been able to deny all the rumours without a second thought. The guy is visibly insane. Just because he’s the only person to have noticed, the only one to observe that the mask of self-congratulating violence Murdoc wears to play stage villains isn’t a mask at all, doesn’t make it less true. 

Murdoc is in love with him. Murdoc is an English assassin who can discourse at length about the niceties of every air-gun on the market, while whipping up fruity whiskey sours. Not someone who cares about the rules. 

But so much in love that he won’t even touch, if he’s told not to. MacGyver forbids him. 

Not because he’s in love with Jack Dalton. That would be a sin. 

At least, he’d honestly always thought so, until the day that he finds himself wiping another man’s blood off his hands. And the distinction between mortal sin and mortal love burns into his soul so completely, so absolutely, that he’ll never be able to lie to himself again. 

Way too late. 

He takes Murdoc as his lover, because there’s nobody else, and he needs somebody. Needs touch, the warmth of flesh against his own. Needs to know that he still has the stuff to inspire unreasonable joy, murders be damned. After years of using sex as a foil, as a way to sidestep anything that might be bubbling away beneath, it’s the path of least resistance. 

And every time the assassin berates him for an obvious tell, for making his intent absurdly clear to their opponents, he nods and smiles a quiet interior smile. 

He’s not in love with Jack Dalton. 

He has to believe that now. 

It’s probably the only thing keeping him alive. 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story isn't gettting itself written in quite the right order. 
> 
> Will probably have to go back and reorganise chapters later.

Any amount of rain is too much, when dealing with an inexperienced climber halfway up a mountain. Murdoc calls a halt for the day, and begins to rig up their tunnel tent on the narrow ledge.  

This is the sort of thing MacGyver typically excels at, but he's busily staring down the Widowmaker with a sort of terrified fascination.

"You know...maybe I should have said this before, but I kinda got this thing about heights."

There's love, there's infatuation and obsession and longing, and there is also simple irritation. As an abstract problem, it interests Murdoc that he can be feeling both simultaneously.

"Perhaps you ought to have mentioned that, oh, four hours ago? When we were still on the ground?"

"Because I didn't know for sure. Because we'd come all this way, and you were really excited...usually when I've been up this high it's been in airplanes, I guess I thought it was just those I was afraid of. I'm mentioning this," MacGyver says, very calmly, "because if anything in the way of business happens, I don't think I'd be able to cope properly. And you ought to know that."

Murdoc pulls him back, gently. "Don't worry about it. I assure you, I've no plans for murder this weekend. And I'll know to keep this in mind, should we be offered assignments anywhere you'd find off-putting."

MacGyver clings to him with a hard frightened grasp. Delightful, and slightly sadistic of him to enjoy so much.

But then, the hope of it is why he'd brought MacGyver here in the first place. 

***************

Once they're inside the tent, once that soft blonde head is resting against his breast and he's pressing MacGyver hard against the solidity of a granite rockface, his protege recovers quickly enough. 

"I didn't take you for the wilderness type. You always seemed...I dunno. Champagne sophistication."

"I appreciate the good things in life," Murdoc agrees. "Extravagently. More extravagently, when I've passed through a short period of deprivation." Strictly controlled deprivation, with a delineated end goal and a deadline. He does not do assassination missions for free. 

Except...

"Huh. That'd explain your Mission City trips, then."

MacGyver talks about the place too much, is still quietly marvelling at his escape. Inevitable, but it really must end. 

"Who would you like to kill, more than anyone else in the world?"

The response is swift and certain. "Eric Woodman."

"Do tell."

"Wall Street shark type, he was doing leveraged buyouts before they came into style. He's closed down a lot of Midwestern factories, and had them rebuilt in China for cheaper."

"That seems a curiously vague motive for murder."

His mouth turns in an ironic twist. "Does years of a lawsuit that wrecked my marriage and almost killed me count?"

Murdoc frowns, because that sarcasm isn't MacGyver's sort of look in the least. (It has helped in his training no end, that the barista spent so many years practicing an unrevealing inexpressiveness). It's a great deal more like his own, in fact. 

Somewhere at the bottom of his heart, he has a swift flash of pain for inflicting this life on his beloved. For not simply taking MacGyver off for a carefree, hedonistic jet-setter's lifestyle, sans blood and mystery and missions, just lazing away their lives between the south of France and the north of Mexico.  

But then, if he hadn't told the truth for once in his life, the man would doubtless have gone along with Pete Thornton's scheming; and he would now be dead. Self-protection as much as anything. 

(Besides which, he simply happens to enjoy being an assassin; and he rather thinks MacGyver will too.)

"In that case. Would you prefer a short, bloody death or a drawn-out affair?"

"Oh, definitely the latter," MacGyver says, wriggling against him with breathtaking carelessness. He has this ridiculous fondness for mixing business with pleasure. "Same as he did to me, without even noticing. Corporate lawyers...he has a Becky of his own. Her name's Lisa. I'd love to see how he'd like it, if I took her away."

"Ah. Do you want to kill her as well?"  
  
"Sheesh, no! She's only a kid, I've got some morals left!"

Too far, too fast. He's made a misstep. "I'm sorry. I thought she might be older."

"You did not," MacGyver grumbles. "Honestly, Murdoc, you really are sick sometimes...actually, I don't really want him dead," he adds thoughtfully. "I'd like to take down his business empire, or let somebody else run it, more like- I want him to be just as scared and broke and terrified for his daughter as I was- but there's no way we can do that to a corporate fat cat like him. Whereas just killing him's probably doable."

"It's a tall order," Murdoc agrees. "But possible. The first order of business is, who'd pay us for it?"

"Who'd want to do that to him, besides me? I mean, anybody who has any money, if you're thinking about pay."

"MacGyver, MacGyver. Nobody reaches that level of wealth without accumulating enemies. Our only problem is finding the right one...as soon as we're off this mountain, I promise we'll start investigating."

"Can we go get started on it right away? Tomorrow?" he asks hopefully. 

"Oh, very well. Since you insist."

After all. It is love. 


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And back to Becky. 
> 
> This is when it starts getting convoluted...

This is Helen. Helen is a secretary. 

At least, that’s how she’s listed on the Phoenix Foundation payroll, and that’s what Pete Thornton thinks she does. He’s the latest in a line of intelligence officials whose main job has been to unknowingly provide her cover, while she gets on with quiet arrangements of her own. 

There was a time early in her career, when she wondered whether the position was too obvious, too forward. She’d long since stopped worrying, though; even the smartest spies have a way of overlooking what’s hidden in plain sight, if they haven’t a reason to be on their guard.

Except for Chrysalis. 

Except for Nikki Carpenter, who does not trust anybody in this business (wise woman!), not even her mentor Thornton. What time Nikki has to spare from her day job (correlating the DXS archive with Phoenix’s top-of-the-line data analysis), she spends nosing into her colleagues’ private lives, and the Los Angeles trade show at large. 

Recently, Nikki has turned her attention to Charity, one of the work-names that Helen uses for her own tradecraft- and that will not do. That persona is the one that has dealt most frequently with HIT; and Nikki seems to nurture a certain dislike for the assassin’s bureau. The attitude can be trained away, of course, but Nikki is a spy worth pampering, and Charity has grown somewhat long in the tooth regardless. Helen has other personas to bring forward, clean ones who won’t unduly shock DXS-trained Nikki. 

“So long, sweet Charity.”

Chestertonian paradox. The best place to hide a leaf is in a forest. The best place to hide a body is in a warzone. 

Especially if the body never existed. 

**********

This is Nikki Carpenter.

Nikki isn’t sure what she is, though she amuses herself on sleepless nights by compiling lists. Bad cook, loyal friend, reasonably accomplished skydiver. Spy. 

Traitor. 

It’s only good business, she’s told herself. Helping herself and Pete Thornton (her mentor, and as close to ethical as anybody in espionage can be); that’s only what spies do in this game, selling their information to the highest bidder. And her cache of DXS data, while perhaps not eye-popping, was sufficient to buy them both promotions in their transfer to Phoenix. Depending on how fast the data gets into the field, the DXS might be a few months before realising what they’ve lost. If they’re very oblivious (Phoenix can be subtle, and Gant can be astoundingly thick), maybe even a few years. 

Still, there’s no harm in mudding the waters a little bit, putting out false information. So she gets hold of one of her new colleagues' personas (Charity, ugh; must belong to one of the male agents, everything in her legend is sickeningly sweet). Arranges a couple of deaths for a variety of randomly selected fellow travellers, including Pete’s perpetual nemesis Murdoc. Not by the usual route of hiring out HIT, obviously. 

It’s not what Phoenix would expect from her. She’s seen her psych eval, and they’re taking Pete’s word for it that her speciality is for undercover office investigations. It’s fine. She’ll stay out of the way for a couple of years, until she’s ready to show off her real strengths. Maybe when Cindy takes over. 

Meantime, this’ll muddy the waters. Suggest the wrong suspects and motives, to anybody who might go looking. People in this business love to connect up patterns, and the dots of this one will point at anybody and anything except Nikki Carpenter. 

Makes her a double traitor, of course. 

It’s easier the second time.

**********

This is Murdoc. Murdoc is an assassin. 

A capable player of the Game as well: the two professions don’t necessarily overlap, but in his case they do. Although he can’t claim to be playing very capably at the moment…

Of course he’s heard about his would-be assassination; HIT makes a point of knowing who wants in on their turf. It’d almost be too easy to stop the Tarnantino gang, so he gets out of town but makes a point of letting it be known when he expect to be back. (In time to suffer through the production of a Christmas choir television programme he’s arranged on behalf of an entire Minnesotan school, by dint of a quite astonishing number of bribes and a word with the right producers. Nothing less complicated could have dragged MacGyver away from his coffee shop; he’s already tried.) 

Money being no object, he coughs up protection money for other various victims on the list (useless in the end, naturally, but the hitmen let themselves be paid off until the timing works out right). Arthur Farrelli will be a good training exercise for Ashton and Becky, to get them properly spooked before they start trying to rescue him. Of course, he’ll be keeping an eye out to make sure they don’t come to any harm. 

At least, that had been the plan: but he’s failed to take MacGyver’s effect on him into account. Sweet, tantalising, perpetually fuming MacGyver, who he’s sharing a hotel room with now (not beds, alas, but still!) So charmed by Californian freedom, already tanning to a fine glow; it is simply unthinkable not to spend every possible moment in the man’s company. One of the rare times that he isn’t, he pulls Penny aside and implores her to keep Becky occupied at all costs. 

It’s criminally negligent, he’s aware. Putting the pieces into motion and then not staying around to make sure the two stay safe. 

But then, criminality is rather what he does. 

**********

This is Penny. Penny fancies herself as a matchmaker, this week.

Which is more than trouble enough, if your name happens to be Becky Grahme.

**********

“C’mon. How complicated this can get?” 

Ashton grimaces, as she and Becky enter the hotel. “Trust me. You have no idea…”


	7. Chapter 7

Lisa Woodman doesn’t much like her mom and dad. 

She’d like to tell herself- she certainly tells her friends, when they’re out carousing on the spoils snitched from parental liquor cabinets- she’d like to say that it’s for high-minded reasons. Her dad’s relentless, joyless chase after profits, her mother’s disgusting habit of swearing fealty to whatever social issue is hot this season and discarding it the moment it goes out of style. Perfect fit for the Phoenix Foundation charity dinners, that. 

Though if she’s being honest with herself, her upset is more to do with basic, annoying teen stuff. Like the way they pitch into her, when she comes home smelling like alcohol; but that is not a version of events that does her any credit. She mentally edits that away. It isn’t hard. 

At least, it isn’t after a drink or two; but they’ve put a lock on the liquor cabinet now. She slouches down to their boathouse, thoroughly bored. 

“You spend all year wishing it was the summer holidays, and as soon as it is, you wonder what you even wanted all this free time for. I’m sick of going to the mall, I’m sick of my friends, I’m sick of everything. I’m even sick of you,” she adds to the boat. A present from her dad, for her tenth birthday. A good one, even. She’s always liked the _Blossom_. 

Lisa gives the bow a good kick and spends the next couple minutes hopping around on one foot, feeling extremely dumb. Stupid sandals. 

The door creaks open. Probably the maid’s been sent down to spy on her again. “Just go away! I said, I need some alone time!”

“Oh. I’m sorry…”

A gorgeous, mellow voice, and the stranger who enters has the looks to live up to it, too. Unbelievably cute blonde hair, soft and long like a girl’s, and a seasoned tan that must be pretty hunky, when he isn’t so pale. Only right now he's all over blood, and pressing a scrap of cotton hard against his left arm. (There’s a corresponding tear, at the bottom of his tight white t-shirt; she finds herself wanting to eye it up and modestly ignore it simultaneously.)

“Only I think I’m about to faint,” he says. 

And does. 

Lisa’s always assumed, in an uninterested sort of way, that she’d be Taken Away From All This by her prince one day. Maybe even an actual prince, because that kind of thing happens to the daughters of captains of industry. Taken away to a home exactly like hers, to wind up one day yelling at a teenage daughter, just the same as her own mom does. 

It has never, ever occurred to her that she might end up saving someone else instead- but she grabs the first aid kit, and thanks her stars for those Saturday afternoons of training at the Challengers Club. The wound looks horrible- a long, deep and vicious cut. Lisa cleans it out with antiseptic (a bottle of 120% vodka, and she’s glad now she resisted the urge to drink it). Bandages it up neatly. It’s lucky that the knife or whatever it was didn’t go up into the shoulder, or she’d be having real trouble...

“Wow….” 

“Mmm?” 

“I always made fun of my girlfriend Ingrid, for memorising a book full of first lines for any occasion. Never thought I’d need one for meeting a stranger bleeding out in our boathouse.”

“Let’s make it easy on you,” he says, subdued but astonishingly cheerful. “I’ll start by saying thanks. Now you can say, you’re welcome.”

“You’re welcome!”

“There you go. Now we’re acquainted.” His eyes flicker, sleepily. “Oh, gee. ‘m so tired…”

“You just lie still. I’ll go get some help.” Reality is settling in, belatedly; there’s other people who do this kind of stuff, people a lot better and smarter than her. 

“Don’t, please.” He reaches out his good hand, just managing to grasp a curl of her hair, as she bends over him. “Somebody framed me for murder. If you tell anybody I’m here, next thing they’ll throw me in prison and I’ll never get out...please, would you help? Just let me hide here for a couple hours, then I go clear my name. Or try, anyway.”

If he’s the kind of guy who can get framed for murder, her cynical dad-voice says, he’s the kind of guy who might actually murder people. 

Hang reality. There’s a good wind blowing. 

Inside half an hour, the _Blossom’s_ out to sea and moving fast. 

**********

“Yeah, Dad, I’m fine. You’ve taken me out often enough. I’m not even going anywhere, just around the harbour a few strokes- what d’ya mean, a murderer?”

Her guest gives her a frantic glance, raises himself a little before collapsing back into a nest of cushions; she shrugs helplessly. Too bad that she doesn’t have an extension so he could listen in. “A boat this size, of course I’d have noticed somebody else abroad. Yeah. Yeah….uh-huh. Okay, well, if a shooter pops up out here in the middle of the ocean, I’ll be sure to call and let you know!”

Lisa slams the phone back, as hard as she can. Guilty conscience as much as anything. 

“This is some murder you’ve got tangled in,” she says aloud. “Um...what’s your name?”

“MacGyver.”

“MacGyver- huh? What’s your first name?”

He blushes hard. “It’s silly.”

“You want me to trust you, right?” 

“Good point.” His breathing is still so shallow, he has to take an extra breath for the sigh. “Angus.”

“Like the steaks?”

“Uh-huh. Like I said, silly- I never heard of anybody else having a name like that, have you?”

“Nope- but it’s better than mine. You know how many Lisas there are in my class at school? And then there’s the three at the Challenger Club…”

“Wait- Lisa? Are you Catherine Woodman’s daughter?”

“Sure. What’s it to you?”

“I am so dead,” he murmurs. “I thought I was still on the Ambassador’s property...she was the murder victim, you know. Oh god. And now your mom’s going to think I kidnapped you- take us back to shore, quick. Even the prison system’s better than what she can do to me.”

“If anything, I kidnapped you. Why should my mom care, anyway?”

“Because- you’ve been very kind to me,” he says, slowly. “Maybe I shouldn’t have even mentioned...no, you’re the kind of person who hates to be told things like that, aren’t you? Only- you can’t ever unhear things. And I don’t think you’d believe me anyway.”

“Make me believe it.” She’s not a kid, after all; she knows her parents have done things that would get them thrown in jail, in any kind of society that makes any sense. Besides. MacGyver’s got an awfully trustworthy face. 

“Well...stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but let’s say you’re a fresh kid outta the Midwest-” and his voice changes, to an accent that’s comedically slurred and a little painful to hear. “And you’re just positive that all you have to do is come to Hollywood, and boom, you’ll be a star. Only it doesn’t work out that way, because...well, because you’re a really bad actor.”

He is looking very sheepish now. 

“But some people make it just on hard work, you know? So you stick at it, and you wait tables, and go to auditions, and a couple years go by. If it doesn’t work out, you can always go home. Only a few more years go by, and you’ve been lying to your folks back home about all these great theatre roles you’ve been in, so one day they write you and say that since you’re happy out there, they’ve sold the house and bought a condo in Florida. You can’t go home. So you stay put. Losing every job you get, because you keep skipping out to go to these auditions, and you never get picked. And one day it starts sinking in that you never will get picked, and after that it’s just waiting. Serving breakfast to people who have great lives like you’ll never have, and listening to them chat about how much they paid for their second yacht or gold-flaked goose liver, while you’re trying to figure out how you’ll scrape together another month’s worth of rent money. Day in, day out, day in...”

She thought she knew about poverty (she’s educated herself on the subject, reading Phoenix handouts that her mother distributes without ever looking at.). But that’s not the same thing at all as what she’s listening to now, with nothing but the wind-lapped waves to interrupt his speech. Quiet: and infinitely more horrifying. 

“And one day, one of your regulars leaves a tip of twenty dollars...and you catch her eye when she’s leaving, and she nods at you to keep it. These kind of windfalls happen sometime, maybe you celebrate that night with a pizza and a beer that actually tastes like something. But then, she does it the next time, and the next, and you start wondering, what is it? What’s she see in me?”

“Love?”

“That’s what I’d hoped it was,” he says, with a catch in his voice. “I know I did...I shouldn’t have, I’d seen the wedding ring. But- you can see how she’d be the highlight of my day. I cut out wearing Hawaiian shirts, because she didn’t like them. Fixed myself up a little bit, started going clean-shaven again. Course, I always made sure she got the best service in the house...I used to fall asleep, dreaming about the way she could make people laugh.”

Sarcastically, Lisa would say any other time; with malice towards others. But not now: not now. 

“And then I lost my job, running off to another fool audition again. Idiot me. I knew I’d never get such a good gig, or see her again...actually, it only took her three weeks to track me down. Three weeks can be an awfully long time, when you’re lonely. Though maybe not long enough, for her purposes. She thought she could get me to do anything- I thought she could, too. But I drew the line at murder...so she got a professional in. Framed me in revenge- did you know that your father was carrying on with the Ambassador? I think that’s what it was all about, at first...”

“Yes. I did know that, actually.”

Nothing to support his tale, not even a shred of proof, but Lisa’s thoroughly convinced. 

It’s so exactly what her parents would do. 


	8. Chapter 8

"You've only got one asset," Lisa says to MacGyver, as they laze and watch the boat drift (he soaks up sunlight with childish enthusiasm, but then she supposes he doesn't get out much). "Me! Kidnap me, and tell my mother she doesn't get her daughter back unless she quashes the fake charges."

"I dunno if she can even do that. I mean, the evidence is awfully damning- this knife wound I've got, and I know I left fingerprints on the murder weapon, the assassin made me hold it. Who's going to believe that I didn't do it?"

"I will," Lisa promises him. "And my mom has some interesting friends- the Phoenix Foundation has this funny way of smoothing over problems for people. All you'd have to do is cut a deal with them, they'll handle the rest....first thing, we get this boat out into international waters and out of easy rescue range. Once we’re far enough off, you start working the radio. Get in touch with mom, make it a condition that she show up to the ransom exchange- actually," Lisa says, chewing her lip. “I’ll do it. I bet I’ll be more convincing than you will.”

“But Lisa. This is never gonna work."

She gives him a reassuring smile, as she starts plotting out their new course. 

It doesn’t work especially well; he looks dubious and scared. The poor actor's missed his cue; clearly, he's got no idea what to do next. She'll have to stage-manage her own kidnapping. Give all the orders, like her dad would do; so thick and fast and authoritative, he won't even stop to question them.

Awesome!

**************

_timestamp: 220890112347_

_Seagull calls._

Eric Woodman quietly smirks to himself. The tracer he’s had sewn into Lisa’s purple jacket is working perfectly. (She’d never leave that piece of clothing behind.)

It’s a good model, with a miniscule GPS rig. And a radio feed. 

_Faint hiccupping. A substantial slap._

_“Thanks.”_

_“Don’t mention it.”_

_“I know what you’re gonna say. You’re gonna tell me, that was a pretty sad effort, and nobody except a know-it-all teenager would have believed a dumb story like the one I told. And I shouldn’t have fallen asleep and missed the first rendezvous. And I definitely should have found a way to stop her pouring all that brandy into me.”_

_“The wonderful thing about you, MacGyver? Or one of them, I should say- you’re so much more efficient about your self-critiquing than I could possibly bring myself to be. Right on all counts!”_

_“I’d have done a better job if you’d given me some warning. I thought today was just going to be, I dunno, casing the joint.”_

_“Life’s a confusing affair. Next time, you’ll know to think up your personas in advance.”_

_“This was in advance!”_

_“And now you’ll remember, with far more vividness than any speech of mine could impart, just how important it is to have a lie ready for any occasion. Though for an amateur’s off-the-cuff effort, you might have done worse. I rather liked that touch about the Hawaiian shirts.”_

_“That was- never mind.”_

_“Ah. Ah ha, nicely played retrieval, but you don’t get out of a slip-up so easily. It was what?”_

_“Maybe I thought you wouldn’t like them?”_

_“That would be almost convincing, if you hadn’t complimented the one I wore for dear Penny Parker’s adaptation of ‘Gilligan’s Island’. Do try again.”_

_“I had to say something! You know what Penny’s like-”_

Amusing, but he’s a busy man; he shuts off the radio feed, and gets back to a few last business affairs he wants to put right before going to bed. Working late, he’d told his soon-to-be-ex-wife. 

Actually the truth, for once. That's not common between them any more.

**************

Nikki pauses the tape. “Pete, is this going anywhere?”

He shrugs. Pulls off his dark glasses and rubs his eyes, a nervous gesture that he’s been indulging rather too frequently for her liking. The DXS is enjoying one of its rare moments in the sun right now, for taking down Zito (they’re both missing the old place these days, not that either of them would admit as much; but then, they’re too old friends to lie to each other now). The fact that Murdoc was in at the kill just makes it worse. 

And now Catherine Woodman, old golfing buddy of Pete’s (early Sunday mornings, when no one else is on the course) and top fundraiser for the Phoenix Foundation, is positive that her husband is going to frame her for kidnapping their daughter. The Big Bird is not having a good summer. 

“Who knows? I’m hoping that you’ll notice something I didn’t, because this is all we have to go on, and we don’t have much time...it’s just lucky that her maid gave her this tape, or we wouldn’t know what hit us.”

“That’s not luck, that’s forward planning. She can’t be as cheap as I thought, if she pays for staff loyalty.”

Nikki pointedly gazes up at the ceiling (it’s all right, he won’t see it), then rewinds. Even by her meticulous standards, installing secret automatic voice-recorders all over the house sounds more than a little paranoid. Catherine’s husband must be an interesting guy.

_“You know what Penny’s like, she’d have stayed glued to my elbow forever until I dug up some comment or other. Can we get to the point? What do we do tomorrow?”_

_“Your kill, MacGyver. How do you want to play it?”_

_“I think- dammit. I should have told Lisa I was an old friend of her dad’s or something, shouldn’t I? But I’d never have been able to pull off that lie….um. So on top of the Woodman business, we still have to figure out how to get that steel factory reopened, and how we fit that in I still don’t know-”_

_“Strictly speaking, that one’s optional. The highest paying job always takes priority, that’s one of HIT’s strict bylaws.”_

_“But I’d feel pretty rotten about taking the money and running. All those tough steelworkers saving up their dough just for us, y’know? So I'm going along with Lisa's plan for now, but...oh, I’m just flailing. Too many variables. Why couldn’t we have just done one job at a time?”_

_“Because not accepting multiple payments for the one job would deeply offend my morals. MacGyver, this is what the Great Game is all about. Entangling yourself in succulent lies and tasty deceptions, until even you don’t know what’s true anymore, and the only way out to start inventing fictions that make more sense than the truth. I assure you, this is a skill, and it can be learnt.”_

_“By throwing me in and watching me sink? To think that six months ago, my biggest problem was just trying to figure out what shade I oughta paint my new jeep...okay. Okay. I think I’ve got an idea.”_

_“Oh?”_

“And that’s where it ends, unfortunately,” Pete says. “They seem to have gone for an impromptu swim.”

“None of that,” Nikki says, “proves conclusively which Woodman even called HIT for a contract in the first place. Who are our loyalties to, anyhow?”

“Oh, undoubtedly Catherine. Putting aside the bad publicity, she’d never hire out a crime like this. Not to HIT, anyway, she’d ask us...and Mr Woodman’s proven a little intractable about letting Phoenix get our claws into his companies.” Pete grimaces. “If there’s even a shred of evidence against him, I’d be all for letting the police haul him in. But do we have one?”

“Not based on that,” Nikki says. Pulls the coffee pot towards her. “Look, maybe we’re overthinking this. We know there’s a vulnerable teenager on a boat. With Murdoc. Let’s go for the jugular, grab them, and sort out who’s paying who for what afterwards.”

“Trust you to cut to the chase,” Pete says, looking much relieved. “I should have thought of that myself. Blame it on the lateness of the hour.”

“I wouldn’t have, only you’ve trained me to.”

He would have eventually. Pete Thornton’s the most moral man she’s ever met, in the business.

Come to think of it, maybe the only one. 


End file.
